Well, now that you mention it musher0, the main thing that troubles me at the moment is the Microsoft-inspired UEFI fiasco. Barry has been looking into the implications of this as far as Puppy Linux is concerned and he's decided to do nothing about it - at least for now.

He's not the only one who seems to be at a loss to find a solution. There are some rather half-baked solutions such as SHIM doing the rounds, but these are at best only workarounds and still involve having to use a Microsoft-supplied key. Not a good solution for Puppy or indeed any Linux for that matter.

The Linux community really needs to become more proactive in solving this problem. Lobbying and legal action immediately spring to mind. Unless something is done about it I fear for the future of Linux._________________Life is too short to spend it in front of a computerLast edited by tronkel on Sun 09 Jun 2013, 14:51; edited 1 time in total

it is not prepared at all to work without some save file (setting up window and greetings windows at start, save file requirement a shutting down) I was afraid to save as I actually have a save file in use for Precise 5.6 itself (because Precise 5.6 uses an obsolete version of libflashplayer.so and I don't want to reinstall each new start!)

what is with the respective save files of both? can they coexist friendly (= without more terrible little windows asking somewhat) in the same partition?

Point 2:

The Office suite claims to miss some fonts! What is to do to avoid that?

Point 3:

The Office suite offers spell checking: Which languages are proposed (can I check German or French or mix both with English as possible in the real M$-Office?)

Point 4:

All new doc's I did receive from users of the M$-Office in the last years were in *.docx format. I don't see this format to save documents. What is the situation about this details?

Well, now that you mention it musher0, the main thing that troubles me at the moment is the Microsoft-inspired UEFI fiasco. Barry has been looking into the implications of this as far as Puppy Linux is concerned and he's decided to do nothing about - at least for now.

He's not the only one who seems to be at a loss to find a solution. There are some rather half-baked solutions such as SHIM doing the rounds, but these are at best only workarounds and still involve having to use a Microsoft-supplied key. Not a good solution for Puppy or indeed any Linux for that matter.

The Linux community really needs to become more proactive in solving this problem. Lobbying and legal action immediately spring to mind. Unless something is done about it I fear for the future of Linux.

I have also read that it is possible to return to the traditional BIOS boot from UEFI, even if a bit complicated?

For my information (I'm still on an old 2.8 MHz AMD):
Is UEFI stored in a hardware "pill", like the traditional BIOS, or is it in software? If it were a "pill", it would be possible to change it, no?

UEFI is only on Windows 8, right? Not Windows 7?

In any case, this "coup d'État" attitude by MS is exactly why I switched to Linux five years ago.

As to the future of Linux, I'm not too worried. For the time being, there is still a large "fleet" of older computers that Linux can run on, and I'm sure it won't take long before an inventive Linux programmer comes up with a solution that will have MS hitting the dust -- and eating it, too.

This whole idea of kingpup was inspired when I decided to update the version of Kingsoft that sits on my Android phone. I didn't realise that they also produced a Linux desktop version of this suite.

This version is 32-bit only and is supplied in the form of a DEB for Ubuntu. This linux version is brand new, is at best BETA software and has been cobbled together in a rush for reasons that I'll explain later in this post.

Whenever I see some interesting software that is intended for Ubuntu/Debian, my first thought is always to consider converting the DEB to a PET for Puppy. This is not always an easy task, but in this case it turned out to be a trivial matter to convert it to a PET. So, adding two and two and making four, it was another simple step to also include some Windows eye-candy as well. This little exercise is intended to more a proof-of-concept rather than a version of release quality. The reason for this is that the Kingsoft Office Suite for Linux has had to be cobbled together in a rush in order to try to satisfy a demand in China for a Linux version, since the chinese version of Ubuntu has now been designated as the official state OS (as far as I understand it). Thus Kingsoft do not want to miss out on a potentially vast market in both China and elsewhere.

This office suite is under very intensive beta development and one can expect changes to be implemented in a continuously ongoing process.

This means that for the moment at least, it's not sensible to fix the kingpup ISO in stone - it's a proof of concept only at this stage.

As regards your questions:

Point 1:

As always in Puppy, if you have pup_sfs's of the same name as is the case here, you have to be careful that the puppy live-cd does not pick up the wrong sfs from within your partition. This would indeed mess up an already created pup_save loopback device. pup_save. Temporarily rename the old sfs to anything you like and also create a separate pup_save file for your later version within the partition.

Point 2:

My system complains on startup about one missing Microsoft font. There is a checkbox there that will prevent the error message from appearing every time you start the program.

Points 3 and 4:

This beta version doesn't appear to have any other language support other than Chinese and English - yet. As yet no docx filter either. I haven't yet had time to check out the full documentation on this, but I reckon that support in these two areas will be implemented very soon. As I say the development on this is proceeding as a matter of urgency. Time permitting, I'll update the kingpup ISO to reflect any substantive changes to the Linux Kingsoft Suite. No reason why other changes to kingpup couldn't be implemented also if there is a demand._________________Life is too short to spend it in front of a computer

I have also read that it is possible to return to the traditional BIOS boot from UEFI, even if a bit complicated?

This whole UEFI thing is a disaster. I'm retired now just this year, but during the time I was working as a Linux trainer, my poor students - particularly the beginners, had to listen to all this blah-blah-blah concerning UEFI while what they really wanted was just to get started using linux without having to struggle with BIOS issues and it's related partitioning issues - a tall order for the poor newbies.

That seems exactly what Microsoft is trying to do here - using the excuse that it's all for the sake of security - what bullshit! Linux has never had any major issues with insecure boot. This is only an excuse to try to implement a solution that has the desired side-effect of discouraging newcomers to Linux at an early stage.

On most Windows PC's and laptops - at least for the moment - there exists the possibility of turning off secure boot, thus obviating the need for a signed bootloader. You should also be able to switch to the old MBR-style (legacy mode) that uses extended/logical partitions. The later Puppies have a version of GParted that detects whether or not UEFI or legacy mode is set in the BIOS. IF UEFI is detected, it will help you set up the necessary partitions.

As if teaching linux to beginners isn't hard enough as it is. They need this UEFI stuff like a hole in the head.
Nightmare for Linux! Make your complaints know to the appropriate authorities!_________________Life is too short to spend it in front of a computer

Well folks Microsoft got to be the Gatekeepers thanks to the fact some of the major distros didn't stand up and fight against it. As old Stallman says "YOU CAN'T FIGHT FOR FREEDOM IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS".

In looking at your jpg of the background, are you at risk if you use and M$ icons, logos, etc?
Knowing that company,s track record, I doubt it.

I remember buying a Toshiba laptop that came with Win 7 64bit.
Out of the box, it booted to the desktop before you could blink at least almost.
After one M$ update, and a reboot, I saw the busy icon for the first time.
And with each additional update, the laptop booted slower and slower!

I went so far as to do a mfg restore of the laptop.
But that did not seem to help!

When 32bit Puppy boots and runs faster than 64bit Win 7 on the same machine, (AMD dual core with 4 gigs memory and 320gig hard drive), that does not say much for Windows!

Also, that same laptop seems to be lacking DMA in accessing the CD/DVD drive as it is the slowest I have ever seen as far as data transfer!

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